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January 19, 2007

SOM Designs Zero Energy Chinese Skyscraper

The 71-story, 2.2-million-square-foot Pearl River Tower, in the new city of Guangzhou, China, being built for the China National Tobacco Corp., is a “net”-zero-energy building designed by the storied architectural firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), New York City, scheduled for completion in 2009. The firm has set its sights on redefining one of its bread-and-butter project types, the corporate headquarters, into a model of high-tech sustainability

The Pearl River Tower epitomizes the super tall corporate headquarters building of tomorrow as an iconic, high performance structure, that is designed so that it potentially produces as much energy as it consumes. The building’s form guides wind to a pair of openings at its mechanical floors. The winds drive turbines that generate energy for the building’s heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems. The openings also provide structural relief, by allowing wind to pass through the building instead of pressing against it.

Orientation, conservation, lighting efficiency, geothermal, energy reuse and energy storage techniques are used to enable the building to generate enough renewable power to meet its energy demands. This is done by five main methodologies:

1) By orienting the building towards the east the tower takes advantage of midday sun while the effects of late-day sun on the larger, southern exposure are minimized.

2) The south facade’s low-E-glass, double-layer curtain-wall system reduces heat gain, which leads to less demand on the HVAC systems.

3) The tower reclaims energy by routing each floor’s exhaust air into the south side’s double-layer curtain-wall cavity. This thermal barrier of hot dry air can then be reused on the mechanical floor for passive dehumidification.

4) The chilled slab concrete vaulted ceilings in the typical offices enhance daylighting, as well as cool the air drifting up from the underfloor ventilation system, the mass of the concrete providing energy storage. This system reduces energy used for cooling by 40 percent compared to a conventional HVAC system.

5) A geothermal heat sink is used to provide cooling water, so 100 degrees Fahrenheit water in the mechanical system’s return loop can be cooled to 75 degrees Fahrenheit prior to feeding the cooling towers, reducing the size of the mechanical plant by about 30 percent.

These five strategies reduce the building’s energy use by nearly 65 percent over a baseline of Chinese building codes. To reach the final goal of net zero energy, the design team incorporated three power-generating technologies: wind, integrated photovoltaics, and microturbines.

The wind turbines take advantage of the prevailing winds from the south, which generate a negative pressure at the north side, of the building. The tower’s curvilinear structure helps to force air through four turbine inlets in the facade, which SOM’s wind studies have predicted will speed up the wind’s velocity two-and-a-half times. SOM estimates the turbines will produce nearly 15 times more electricity than a typical stand-alone wind generator.

No details are provided for the size or location of the photovoltaics, except that they are on the south facade.

I assume the the microturbines are use to supplement power when the renewables do not generate enough power.

About SOM

Louis Skidmore and Nathaniel Owings established an office in Chicago in 1936 and opened a branch in New York in 1937. The practice became Skidmore, Owings, & Merrill (SOM) in 1939 when John Merrill joined the partnership.

SOM's commitment to design quality coupled with it's sophistication in building technology applications has resulted in a portfolio that features some of the most important architectural accomplishments of this century. Lever House in New York City, Sears Tower in Chicago, John Hancock Tower in Chicago to name just a few. Currently, the firm is designing landmarks for the next generation, such as the Freedom Tower in New York City, and Burj Dubai which will be the world's tallest building when it is completed, as well as numerous other projects around the globe.

SOM’s work ranges from the design and engineering of individual buildings to the master planning and design of entire communities. The Firm has conceived, designed and built projects that include corporate office; banking and financial institutions; government buildings; public and private institutions; health care facilities; religious buildings; airports; commercial and retail facilities; recreational and sports facilities; university buildings; and residential developments.

tower reclaims energy by routing each floor’s exhaust air into the south side’s double-layer curtain-wall cavity. This thermal barrier of hot dry air can then be reused on the mechanical floor for passive dehumidification.

Great post I suspect that they have some heat requirements that can't always be met in more efficient ways, and chose to generate that heat it in a way that gave them some bonus electricity on the side. thanks for the sharing

The word "skyscraper" originally was a nautical term referring to a small triangular sail set above the skysail on a sailing ship. The term was first applied to buildings of steel framed construction of at least 10 stories in the late 19th century, a result of public amazement at the tall buildings being built in major cities like Chicago, New York City, Detroit, and St. Louis.

An early development was Oriel Chambers in Liverpool. Designed by local architect Peter Ellis in 1864, the building was the world's first iron-framed, glass curtain-walled office building. It was only 5 floors high as the elevator had not yet been invented.Further developments led to the world's first skyscraper, the ten-storey Home Insurance Building in Chicago, built in 1884–1885. While its height is not considered very impressive today, it was at that time. The architect, Major William Le Baron Jenney, created a load-bearing structural frame. In this building, a steel frame supported the entire weight of the walls, instead of load-bearing walls carrying the weight of the building. This development led to the "Chicago skeleton" form of construction.

The structural definition of the word skyscraper was refined later by architectural historians, based on engineering developments of the 1880s that had enabled construction of tall multi-storey buildings. This definition was based on the steel skeleton—-as opposed to constructions of load-bearing masonry, which passed their practical limit in 1891 with Chicago's Monadnock Building. The steel frame developed in stages of increasing self-sufficiency, with several buildings in Chicago and New York advancing the technology that allowed the steel frame to carry a building on its own. Today, however, many of the tallest skyscrapers are built almost entirely with reinforced concrete.Pumps and storage tanks maintain water pressure at the top of skyscrapers.

The building topped out at 330 m (1,083 ft) on 29 October 2007 and completed in early 2009.It is used for office and hotel space, with retail at its base. The building houses a 270-room 5-star hotel, a 1,600-seat grand ballroom and a carpark located at basement level. The office space is located on floors 1 to 55. Floors 56 to 68 are occupied by the hotel with a lobby on the 71st floor. Floors 72 to 74 are used for a restaurant and an observation deck. The four elevators that lead directly from the lobby to the 72nd floor are Schindler 7000 and reach a maximum speed of 10 meters per second.

Momentum in setting records passed from the United States to other nations with the opening of the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in 1998. The record for world's tallest building remained in Asia with the opening of Taipei 101 in Taipei, Taiwan, in 2004. A number of architectural records, including those of the world's tallest building and tallest free-standing structure, moved to the Middle East with the opening of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, UAE.

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A system can transfer energy to another system by simply transferring matter to it (since matter is equivalent to energy, in accordance with its mass). However, when energy is transferred by means other than matter-transfer, the transfer produces changes in the second system, as a result of work done on it.

Another notable SOM engineer is Bill Baker, who is best known as the engineer of Burj Khalifa (Dubai, 2010), the world’s tallest manmade structure. To support the tower’s record heights and slim footprint, he developed the “buttressed core”[4] structural system, consisting of a hexagonal core reinforced by three buttresses that form a Y shape.

skyscraper is a tall, continuously habitable building. There is no official definition or height above which a building may clearly be classified as a skyscraper. Most cities define the term empirically; even a building of 80 meters (262 feet) may be considered a skyscraper if it protrudes above its built environment and changes the overall skyline.

An early development was Oriel Chambers in Liverpool. Designed by local architect Peter Ellis in 1864, the building was the world's first iron-framed, glass curtain-walled office building. It was only 5 floors high as the elevator had not yet been invented

A skyscraper is a tall, continuously habitable building. There is no official definition or height above which a building may clearly be classified as a skyscraper. Most cities define the term empirically; even a building of 80 meters (262 feet) may be considered a skyscraper if it protrudes above its built environment and changes the overall skyline.

Darklighters can teleport from place to place by orbing, as Whitelighters can, but their orb effects are black in color. Their ability is called black orbing.They also come equipped with crossbows, which they can summon into their hands at any time.The Darklighter crossbow arrows are coated with a special type of poison that is especially lethal to Whitelighters.

Photography is the process, activity, and art of creating still pictures by recording radiation on a radiation-sensitive medium, such as a photographic film, or electronic image sensors. Photography uses foremost radiation in the UV, visible and near-IR spectrum.For common purposes the term light is used instead of radiation. Light reflected or emitted from objects form a real image on a light sensitive area (film or plate) or a FPA pixel array sensor by means of a pin hole or lens in a device known as a camera during a timed exposure.

A skyscraper is a tall, continuously habitable building. There is no official definition or height above which a building may clearly be classified as a skyscraper. Most cities define the term empirically; even a building of 80 meters (262 feet) may be considered a skyscraper if it protrudes above its built environment and changes the overall skyline.

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